ECI acting as BJP’s puppet, alleges A.P. Cong. chief Sharmila

Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president Y. S. Sharmila Reddy on Thursday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Election Commission of India (ECI), accusing them of orchestrating a massive fake voter scam, which she said was recently exposed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Addressing a press conference at the party office in Vijayawada, Ms. Sharmila said Rahul Gandhi had “dropped a political hydrogen bomb” by revealing evidence that 25 lakh bogus votes were created in Haryana to help the BJP win in that State.

She called this “a theft of democracy,” asserting that the Election Commission had colluded with the ruling party to manipulate electoral rolls. “Without these fabricated votes,” she argued, “Congress would have comfortably won the Haryana elections.”

Highlighting the narrow victory margin, Ms. Sharmila said, “the BJP came to power in Haryana by only 1.18 lakh votes, a gap of just 0.7 % in vote share. That means one out of every eight votes was fake, a daylight robbery of the people’s mandate.”

She accused the Election Commission of abandoning its constitutional integrity and becoming a tool of the BJP and RSS. “Wherever BJP needs votes, fake ones are added, wherever it doesn’t, genuine ones are deleted,” she said. Ms. Sharmila also alleged that voter lists were concealed, CCTV footage destroyed, and digital records withheld, all to cover up the scam.